20VC: Scaling from a $4M Angel Fund to $900M, Why Seed May Be The Best priced Asset Class and Not Overpriced At All & The 3 Stages of Fund Scaling and What it Takes To Build a Firm with Aydin Senkut, Founder and Managing Partner @ Felicis

**Harry Stebbings** (0:00)
Welcome back, this is 20VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and I'm so thrilled to be joined today in the hot seat by one of the greatest in venture of the last two decades. He has scaled his firm from a super angel with a firm one of $4 million to their latest $900 million fund just last year, an incredible 16-year journey involving investing in 45 unicorns, 14 IPOs. And so with that, I'm thrilled to welcome Aydin Senkut, founder and managing partner of Felicis. Aydin's been named on the Forbes Midas list for the past nine years, and along the way, as I mentioned, 45 unicorns, including the likes of Adyen, Canva, Shopify, Notion, Opendoor, Plaid, just to name a few. And prior to starting Felicis, Aydin was a senior manager at Google, where he spent an incredible six years. I'd also want to say a huge thank you to Victoria and Dasha at Felicis and Harley at Shopify, some amazing question suggestions today and really made the show so much more special. But before we move into the episode today, Harvard Management Company is constantly seeking out the next generation of great investors and entrepreneurs.
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You have now arrived at your destination. Aydin, this is such a joy to do. I cannot believe it's been so long since our last episode. So thank you so much for joining me first.

**Aydin Senkut** (3:24)
Thanks, Harry. I really appreciate it. It's a privilege to be here for a second time. I'm really, really proud of how far the show came and your incredible audience and your grit. Very excited to be here on the show with you.

**Harry Stebbings** (3:36)
When we last spoke, I was actually young, Aydin. So sadly, some things have changed. But I do want to start, and for those that missed our first episode, how did you make your way into the world of venture and talk to me about the founding of Felicis and how that came together in a brief two to three minutes?

**Aydin Senkut** (3:50)
This is something I always dreamt of doing. Both my parents were entrepreneurs. I just think that it's one of the coolest things one can do to start a company. It is an arduous journey, but it is a very fun one. Everything that I've done in my life until the point that I started Felicis was really designed for me to be a great venture investor. The turning point really for me was when I left Google, where I was for roughly six years, a little bit as a product manager and then a strategic sales manager. And I realized when I went with the company from 30 to 3,000 people that was getting too big for me, let alone the 100,000 plus that it is today. And I wanted to do something again that is a little bit more entrepreneurial, something from scratch. After much deliberation, I realized this is kind of the way of Silicon Valley, right? Like after being an operator, it's kind of nice to consider getting into angel investing. And then I leveraged that to become a full-fledged VC. Most importantly, I thought I always wanted to be an investor when I was a little kid. But we didn't have the concept of venture capital when I was growing up in Istanbul. It was more like being in a 100% plus inflation country where like every night, my parents and I are like, okay, where are we going to invest now? German marks, French francs, like, are we going to do something else? And then I used to read my parents magazines. We didn't have iPads, maybe for the better. I would read Fortune, Time and Business Week. And I would read these articles with CEOs. I'm like, I want to be like that one day and I want to be like an investor one day. And little did I realize that I could actually like combine all the things that I aspire in this little pledge league thing that started as an angel investment activity and turned into a venture firm and also just a really good excuse to practice something different. As a complete outsider to venture, I thought there is an opportunity to do something new in it. And the last interesting thing in terms of the most important part of the founder story is I actually was thinking maybe I should work at a firm first and learn the ropes before I started, but I didn't really have a typical background and nobody really wanted to give me a job. So it ended up being the best thing that happened to me because I literally burned the bridges, turned my back to the wall and the only thing I could do is start and make it great.